


The War

by TheSmallestStar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3308600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSmallestStar/pseuds/TheSmallestStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara Bitlle had called you their ‘cutesy litte housewife’ once. You took it as a compliment. It wasn’t meant as one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War

It’s always hurt. Of course it has; you were never quite cool enough for them, but that didn’t stop you. You were always walking – not next to them, you weren’t meant to do that – but only a few steps behind. They would always try to include you, good-naturedly changing their games to include a fierce female heroine who could help the good guys save the day. You were there through childhood, through teenage years – Steve’s confidence crisis and Bucky’s flirtatious ways, Steve’s stubbornness at standing up for what was right and Bucky’s habit of wading straight in after him – into adulthood, with Bucky scaring you and Steve witless on the docks each day and Steve needing constant low-level assurance that he was just perfect the way he was.

Barbara Bitlle had called you their _‘cutesy litte housewife’_ once. You took it as a compliment. It wasn’t meant as one.

The war meant that you couldn’t even stay your customary two steps behind them. First Bucky, handsome and dashing and looking like he had stepped out of a story book, and then Steve, still small and your Steve but inflated with the chance he had been given, walked out of your tiny two-bedroom flat with their bags. Headed to war, while all you could do was apply for the munitions factory. Sure, you understood that the home front was important stuff. But they were laying down their lives. You wanted to do the same.

Then Steve became Captain Freaking America and even the last links you had to them went to hell. Steve was touring. Bucky’s letters were shorter and more hurried by the month. Steve went to the front line on tour. Bucky’s condolence letter arrived. Steve got word to you that Bucky was in fact alive. Then they were both dead.

The war, according to all of the newspapers, had been won. Germany would pay, peace would prevail. You didn’t believe it. The war hadn’t been won. Steve and Bucky were gone.

For months you existed. Your routine was the same every day – sleep, eat, exercise, work, eat, sleep. One of the girls at the factory who had stayed on after the war told you that you looked different. You shrugged her off. No-one else noticed or cares to ask. You don’t have any friends to worry about you. You’ve always been too preoccupied with being on the side of their partnership to socialise much more. Only now do you realise that even with your best efforts, that relationship only ever had room for two.

After months (you don’t know how many, but it’s hot and dusty now), the men come. At night, in through your window that they smashed with a brick. There are three of them and they gag you and take you to a military base. The gates have a strange symbol on them, one that seems sinister and foreboding. A small man with a German accent injects you with something that knocks you out for five days, according to the guards. You think that they’re going to torture you, but they never do. You now live in a cell, four walls that never change. There’s a mirror, a one-way mirror, in one of them, so there’s obviously something they want, but no matter how much you beg and cry and scream and fight, no-one tells you anything.

It takes you a whole three months to realise that your periods have stopped. Another five to see that your hair and nails aren’t growing any longer. That’s when it hits you that something’s seriously off.

Time passes, and despite how hard you try, your brain forces you to stop the yelling and screaming and pounding the one-way mirror. You console yourself that for a year now, they haven’t done anything to you but somehow freeze you so that you don’t change.

At least they haven’t killed you yet. They will one day, you know.

Months pass and your brain slips into survival mode with such little stimulation. Years. Decades. You don’t change, so it’s hard to tell.

But then one day there’s motion like you’ve never seen before, and then a red-haired woman is grabbing your arm and yelling at you to run. You run. The passages seem endless but there are other people running, so you follow them. It seems like the best plan. Once you get outside, for the first time since that night, you collapse.

Waking up is a strange experience. There are very bright lights in your eyes, and beeping, and low voices. Then a face – a nice face, not wearing a mask – comes into vision. “Well hello,” it says. “How come Cap's white as a bloody sheet at seeing you?” It doesn’t make sense at the time, but you learn that Cap is Steve _(Steve??? Alive??? You may or may not have started crying in relief_ ) and decades were, in fact, seven decades. You live in Tony Stark’s tower and learn people’s names and go back to being the _cutesy little housewife_.

Then Bucky’s alive too, but he’s bad, and brainwashed, and everyone is running around a lot in the Avengers Tower. Steve comes to you more and more and it’s because you are the only other person alive to remember Bucky as he was.

Bucky tries to kill Steve. Bucky saves Steve. Bucky disappears for weeks. Bucky turns up on the doorstep one night, shivering and wet and incoherent.

It’s a miracle. And it takes time – too much time – for Bucky to begin talking, and then too much time for him to recognise you, and too much time for him to stop waking up screaming every night.

It’s dark outside, and the screen in your room is showing constellations. You like stars, because they haven’t changed, even now that everything else has. You’re sitting on your bed, talking to JARVIS, when he announces Bucky. Bucky’s not shaking and sweating, which means no nightmare. He’s not got the horrible coldness of the Winter Soldier in his eyes that tell of a relapse. He’s not got the hopeful ‘Is Steve in here with you’ look. He just looks confused.

“Hey, Bucky,” you say, making room for him on the bed. You sit in silence for a few minutes. Everyone knows not to rush Bucky when he wants to say something.

“I’m not the Winter Soldier anymore,” is what he finally comes out with. You’re about to jump in when he goes on. “And I’m not the Bucky Steve grew up with, and I’m not the Bucky who fought with Steve. So who am I?”

You look at the constellations. They tell you what to say. Because yes, Bucky’s come to you. But there’s only one thing to say. There’s only ever been one real answer to that question. You’re always two steps behind. The relationship only ever had room for two. You used to say the shadows are comfortable and cool, out of the glare of watchful eyes. You’re the _cutesy little housewife_ who was never quite cool enough. There’s only one answer.

“You’re Bucky. James Barnes. You’re Steve Roger’s best friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, what did you think? I've never written Marvel before, but I saw this prompt somewhere, and it took hold, and I didn't do it justice but wanted to stick it up somewhere...


End file.
